Tesla has just launched its RoboTaxi service at a relatively small scale in **two new US cities on the same day**. Significantly, these vehicles are **completely unsupervised**, meaning there is no one in the vehicle from Tesla supervising.
The speaker highlights this as evidence of Tesla's extreme confidence in the capability and safety of its software. They assert that Tesla's number one priority has always been safety above all else, engineering their vehicles to be the safest in their categories with the lowest probability of injury and active safety features. This commitment extends to deploying RoboTaxis, as Tesla would not put fully unsupervised vehicles on roads in a new city on day one unless they were extremely confident there would be no major issues.
The speaker warns of the catastrophic media "shitstorm" that would ensue if any issues occurred, criticizing what they call the "dying, deservedly so, mainstream media" for using "Tesla" in headlines for clicks, even for trivial or misleading stories (e.g., a Tesla getting rear-ended). They emphasize that a legitimate collision where a Tesla RoboTaxi was at fault would be front-page news for months, highlighting the high stakes and the catastrophic PR fallout for Tesla.
Despite these high stakes, this marks **the launch in two new cities, fully unsupervised**, and the speaker notes that this is **not the first time** Tesla has launched fully unsupervised RoboTaxis in a new marketplace/city, stating that this is **becoming a trend**.